Excerpts below confirm
the bumper sticker: "If you think health care is expensive now; wait
until it is free."

Excerpts from following article:

Washington Post

Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets
Fresh LookLevy Viewed as Way to Reduce Deficits, Fund Health
Reform
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a
trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington
policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered
politically taboo: a national sales tax.

Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax -- called a
value-added tax, or VAT -- has not been seriously considered in the United
States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money
the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity.

At a White House conference earlier this year on the government's budget
problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy
F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the
subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last
month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits
projected under Obama's policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget
Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.

"Everybody who understands our long-term budget problems understands
we're going to need a new source of revenue, and a VAT is an obvious
candidate," said Leonard Burman, co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a
joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, who
testified on Capitol Hill this month about his own VAT plan. "It's common to
the rest of the world, and we don't have it."

Obama wants to raise income taxes for high earners and impose new levies
on business, but those moves would not generate enough cash to cover the
cost of health care, much less balance the budget, and they have not been
fully embraced by Congress. Obama's plan to tax greenhouse-gas emissions
could raise trillions of dollars, but again, Congress is balking.

Key lawmakers are considering other ways to pay for health reform,
including new taxes on sugary soda, alcohol and employer-provided health
insurance. The last proposal could raise a lot of money -- nearly $1
trillion over the next five years, according to White House budget
documents. But options on the table would raise a fraction of that sum. And
while it might pay for health care, it would barely dent deficits projected
to total nearly $4 trillion over the next five years and to grow rapidly in
the future, as baby boomers draw on Social Security and Medicare.

Enter the VAT, one of the world's most popular taxes, in use in more than
130 countries. Among industrialized nations, rates range from 5 percent in
Japan to 25 percent in Hungary and in parts of Scandinavia. A 21 percent VAT
has permitted Ireland to attract investment by lowering its corporate tax
rate.

What would it cost? Emanuel argues in his book that a 10 percent VAT
would pay for every American not entitled to Medicare or Medicaid to enroll
in a health plan with no deductibles and minimal copayments. In his 2008
book, "100 Million Unnecessary Returns," Yale law professor Michael J.
Graetz estimates that a VAT of 10 to 14 percent would raise enough money to
exempt families earning less than $100,000 -- about 90 percent of households
-- from the income tax and would lower rates for everyone else.

And in a paper published last month in the Virginia Tax Review, Burman
suggests that a 25 percent VAT could do it all: Pay for health-care reform,
balance the federal budget and exempt millions of families from the income
tax while slashing the top rate to 25 percent. A gallon of milk would jump
from $3.69 to $4.61, and a $5,000 bathroom renovation would suddenly cost
$6,250, but the nation's debt would stabilize and everybody could see a
doctor.

Burman, who helped House Democrats craft an unsuccessful 2007 plan to
repeal the alternative minimum tax, said he's received a number of phone
calls from lawmakers interested in his idea, though "they can't quite
imagine how to make it happen politically." Burman said the 25 percent rate
has caused some sticker shock, and he's trying to figure out how to bring it
down.

"I think interest is quietly picking up," Graetz said. "People are
beginning to recognize that the mathematics of the current system are just
unsustainable. You have to do something. And a VAT has got to be on the
table if you want to do something big and serious."